Wednesday, 11 September 2019

Public Health England (PHE) has discovered that some pharmaceutical drugs have been 'over-prescribed' resulting in millions of patients becoming addicted to them. The review it conducted found that half of the patients using these drugs had been taking them for 12 months or more.

Readers of this blog will not be too surprised about this. But the medical director of PHE was surprised, according to a BBC article, "Too many hooked on prescription drugs" which also appeared to be surprised at these findings.The conventional medical establishment, of which both PHE and BBC News belong, should not be surprised. They have been pushing pharmaceutical drugs for years, decades in fact, as positive, beneficial life changing treatments - without expressing, or even asking about whether there were concern about their side effects and their safety.

It is little wonder that patient are demanding this harmful drugs, that politicians are falling over themselves to spend more and more on them. Few people know any differently.

Even this BBC article continued to emphasise the importance of these addictive drugs, "they have many vital clinical uses and can make a huge difference to peoples quality of life" we are told! It's just that these doctors have prescribed them for too long, or longer than 'clinically appropriate', that the drugs would either have stopped working, or the risks outweighed the benefits. So it's the fault of the doctors, not the drugs.

So what are these 'useful' life-enhancing drugs that are so 'vitally important' to our health, but so misguidedly used?

Antidepressant Drugs. Now prescribed to 7.3 million patients - in England alone - in 2017-18.

Benzodiazepine Drugs (prescribed for anxiety). Still prescribed to 1.4 million people.

Z-Drugs (or sleeping pills). Prescribed to 1 million people.

All these drugs have been causing patient harm for decades, and the conventional medical establishment continues to prescribe them - and apparently, over-prescribing them - to the detriment of patient health. Why?

Well, Professor Helen Stokes-Lampart, of the Royal College of GP's might have presented an answer to this question, perhaps in error. She is quoted (in the BBC article) as saying that doctors do not like prescribing drugs on a long-term basis, but were sometimes left with no choice.

"What it indicates is the severe lack of alternatives".

Indeed it is! Conventional medicine has no pharmaceutical drugs that work effectively, or are safe. Antidepressants, Opioids, Gabapentinoids, Benzodiazepines and Z-drugs are the best they have. So what else can doctors do when faced with a patient? As I said in a previous blog, in 2016, the medicine cupboard is bare. All that is left is dangerous drugs that harm patients. Doctors have nothing else to offer their patients. Its pharmaceutical drugs that harm, or nothing. And it is difficult for doctors to admit that they have no effective treatment when their patients are sitting in front of them.

The medical director of PHE, Professor Paul Cosford, said that he wanted to make sure that patients are helped to access 'alternative treatments'. He does not mention what these alternative treatments are, but clearly they are not pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines - there are none - the medicine cupboard is bare!

So could it be alternative medicine? Natural medical therapies? Homeopathy? Naturopathy? Osteopathy? Acupuncture? He does not say.

But then it is most unlikely that this is what he is talking about. PHE, no doubt with the approval and connivance of Professor Paul Cosford, is even now trying to stop patients having access to natural medicine, and especially homeopathy. There is no evidence that they work, he says. And the NHS decided some two years ago that even the paltry amounts of money spent on these therapies is to be reduced - or preferably stopped altogether!

So PHE is faced with a dilemma. They have placed all their eggs in one cupboard. They have created a drugs monoopoly within the NHS monopoly. And the result is that millions of patients are now suffering, as PH have now (belatedly) discovered. And in pursuit of this pharmaceutical monopoly they have jettisoned any and all viable alternative medical therapies that might have come to their assistance.

So what are patients to do? Their only choice is to seek real, effective, safe alternatives for themselves, outside the NHS. Homeopathy has alternatives to antidepressant, opioid, gabapentinoid, benzodiazepine and Z drugs. The NHS (as sure as hell) does not want them.

I wrote about the dangers of over-the-counter drugs is in my blog "Pharmaceutical drugs on sale at the pharmacy are no safer" in January 2017. In this I discussed the dangers of drugs such as Alka Sultzer, Anadin, Beechams Powders, Benylin, Calpol, Dulcolax, Feminax, Gavascon, Lemsip, Nurofen, Rennies, Robitussin, Solpadeine, Strepsils, Voltarol, and Zantac.

Now, allowing Statin drugs to be sold over-the-counter, takes this another stage further. When first introduced patients were told that Stains were extremely effective, and entirely safe. THEY HAVE PROVEN TO BE NEITHER.
Indeed, I have written about the dangers of Statins many times over the years (go to the search bar above and type 'statins' to see these blogs). But in summary, the side effects now associated with these drugs are numerous and serious. They include:

cataracts

heart failure

pneumonia

nerve damage

muscle pain, muscle tissue breaking down

diabetes

prostate cancer

liver damage

kidney disease

memory loss (dementia?)

So are they dangerous enough to ensure that doctors monitor patients who take them? Apparently not, at least not as far as the NHS, and the conventional medical establishment, is concerned.

I can think of only two reasons for opening up the availability of these seriously harmful drugs

pharmaceutical profits.

doctors wanting to avoid the responsibility and blame of prescribing them.

Conventional medicine is not over-concerned with safety. The principle of 'first do no harm' has long been jettisoned by doctors. No amount of evidence of patient harm appears to have any impact on the sale and promotion of pharmaceutical drugs, regardless of the harm they are known to cause.

Monday, 9 September 2019

We are constantly being told by doctors and the mainstream media about new medical breakthroughs, new 'wonder' drugs, new miracles cures, that are going to be 'game changers' in the treatment of disease.

Yet year by year we are getting sicker. Chronic diseases (allergy, arthritis, autism, cancer, dementia, diabetes, et al) is now running at epidemic levels, and increasing, and conventional medicine says that it does not know what is causing them. Nor do they have any treatment capable of treating them successfully.

"There seems to be a new drug to treat anything and everything these
days, but are these medications as effective as they claim to be? A new
study has concluded that the answer to that question is no. Furthermore,
researchers say that international drug development processes,
standards, and policies are fundamentally broken and must be reformed."

The study was undertaken at the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care. It found that more than half of new drugs introduced to the German healthcare system have shown absolutely no added benefit. The researchers examined 216 drugs that between 2011 and 2017 had passed
regulatory approval, and the European Medicines Agency had further approved for
widespread use in Europe. "... only a quarter of those drugs showed any significant medical added benefit, and 16% showed even a minor added benefit, and a whopping 58% of studied drugs showed no benefit at all beyond 'standard patient care".

These are, of course, the same pharmaceutical drugs that our mainstream media are always telling us about - the one's that are going to be 'medical breakthroughs', 'wonder drugs', miracle cures', and similar propaganda.
Of course, there has been no mention of this study in the mainstream media. Or by Government. Or by National Health Services throughout the world? Or from our doctors?

"More than half of new drugs entering the German healthcare system have not been shown to add benefit" suggesting that the researchers said that international drug development processes and policies are responsible "and must be reformed". It commented further.

"Medicines regulators around the world are pursuing a strategy aimed at accelerating the development and approval of drugs. These approaches are based on the assumption that faster access to new
drugs benefits patients. The rhetoric of novelty and innovation creates
an assumption that new products are better than existing ones. But
although gaps in the therapeutic armamentarium undoubtedly exist,
research covering drug approvals since the 1970s suggests only a limited
number of new drugs provide real advances over existing drugs. Most studies put the proportion of true innovation at under 15%, with no clear improvement over time."

NOT ONLY HAVE PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS BEEN BANNED IN THE PAST BEFORE THEY WERE EITHER DANGEROUS OR USELESS.

EVEN THE NEW DRUGS COMING ON TO THE MARKET ARE NO BETTER.

Conventional medicine is failing, and failing badly. But let me add one more recent news story, courtesy of BBC News, concerning the cost of these wonderful new pharmaceutical drugs. The article was entitled "Cystic fibrosis drugs rejected for use by NHS in Scotland". The BBC, as per usual, described the drugs, Oekambi and Symkevi, as "life changing" - so perhaps they have not read the German study, or have decided not to mention it!

I am publishing here just the Executive Summary which gives an overview of the book, in order to demonstrate just how important the issues he is raising are.

Can I suggest that everyone downloads this E-Book whih is free to download in PDF format.

Executive Summary
➧ American children have never been sicker. Over half (54%) are
suffering from one or more chronic illnesses, with the late 1980s and
early 1990s viewed as the gateway period that launched the decline.

➧ Many chronic illnesses have doubled since that time. The “4-A”
disorders— autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, asthma and
allergies—have experienced meteoric growth, affecting children’s quality
of life and contributing to premature mortality. The spike in autism
prevalence has been particularly dramatic, with prevalence as high as 3%
(one in 34 children) in some regions. Pediatric autoimmune conditions
also are on the rise.

➧ U.S. children are far more likely to die
before their first birthday than infants in other wealthy countries and
life expectancy is falling, driven largely by rising death rates in
adolescents and younger adults. Suicide is the second leading cause of
death in teens, half of whom are reported to have at least one mental,
emotional or behavioral disorder.

➧ The proportion of public
school children using special education services is skyrocketing, with
estimates ranging from 13% to 25% of school populations.

➧
Health authorities are incapable of explaining the reason for these
dramatic shifts. Mounting evidence indicates that environmental toxins
are the principal culprits.

➧ Children are exposed to many
neuro- and immunotoxins that interact synergistically to damage their
health. These toxins include heavy metals; pesticides and herbicides
such as glyphosate; fluoride; bisphenol A; air pollutants; per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances; phthalates; flame retardants; acetaminophen;
food additives; and aspartame.

➧ Tellingly, children’s health
began worsening at precisely the same time that the U.S. started
expanding the types and total number of vaccines required for school
attendance.

➧ Studies have linked vaccines and toxic vaccine
ingredients to a wide range of adverse health outcomes, including
neurodevelopmental disorders, allergies, seizures and many others. Time
trend analyses show strong correlations between autism and total number
of vaccines by 18 months as well as exposure to aluminum vaccine
adjuvants.

➧ Vaccines administered during pregnancy can induce
an inflammatory response in the mother that can cross the placenta and
potentially harm the fetal brain.

➧ The social and economic fallout from these health challenges is
hitting home hard—with adverse impacts on intelligence, fertility,
household and government finances, employment, productivity, military
recruitment and more. The disproportionately high level of
neurodevelopmental disability in males versus females is also reshaping
society.

➧ Mystifyingly, there is almost no outcry in medical, public health or government circles to find answers and solutions.

There is no crisis that more urgently requires attention than the heavy
burden of chronic illnesses affecting over half of our nation’s
children.

Monday, 2 September 2019

When you write a blog that contains positive and accurate information about homeopathy, and health generally, you can expect to be attacked by homeopathy denialists. It's part of the territory! You can see in these two previous blogs what they have to say for themselves, and the quality of their arguments.

Some of my detractors use my confrontation with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to attack me, so it might be useful to outline what happened - not to defend myself, that's unnecessary, but to demonstrate how homeopathy deniers work in order to support the conventional medical establishment, and to undermine homeopathy, and other natural therapies.

One skeptic made a complaint about my homeopathy website. The complaint concerned my comments about the homeopathic treatment of arthritis, complaining that what I had written was not justified, and was not supported by medical science.

I was not the only one to be attacked in this way. Many other homeopaths became the subject of a single complainant, making a similarly facile complaint. It was clearly an organised and co-ordinated attack on homeopathy by militant skeptics who support the pharmaceutical industry.

Other natural therapies were also targeted, not least Chiropractors, another medical therapy particularly hated by skeptics.

I decided that the complaint was unjustified, and asked my registration organisation, the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, to support me. This was readily agreed, not least because by this time there were already several other homeopaths facing similar complaints, and it was clear that this was an organised 'anti-homeopathy' campaign. After some discussion I agreed that the complaint against me should be used as a 'test' case.

It soon became clear that ASA were not open to reasonable or rational discussion. They did not agree that the evidence I had provided was evidence. They had been told by medical experts that there was no such evidence for homeopathy. These experts were, of course, conventional medical 'experts'! Conventional medicine routinely states that 'there is no evidence to support homeopathy', it is one of their mantras. And it became clear that it was a mantra that ASA had been persuaded to adopt, rigidly.

Nor would ASA accept that I had treated many patients who had suffered with arthritis, with great success. Some of these patients would have willingly told ASA this, but they insisted that cured patients were also not considered to be proper 'evidence'!

Meetings were arranged between ASA and the two main homeopathic registration bodies, the ARH, and the Society of Homeopaths. They found that ASA were absoultely immovable. They had been told that there was no evidence to support homeopathic treatment, so all claims for its effectiveness had to be removed from all adverts.

This is something that the homeopathic community would not, could not, and will not accept, not least because making sick people better is what homeopaths do for a living, every day of the week.

ASA is a private company, which earns money from its advertisers. The biggest advertisers are the pharmaceutical industry, and related industries, so no doubt the dominant source of ASA's income.

So the homeopathic community had to make a decision. We either had to insist that we were going to continue advertising, honestly and accurately, about the value and benefitis of homeopathic treatment. Or we had to cave in to ASA's myopic and inaccurate view of homeopathy.

The ARH decided that it was not going to cave in, although we would check to our own satisfaction that adverts conformed with our well established advertising guidelines. Facing up to ASA was to be a personal decision by each individual homeopath, but any homeopath who decided to stand firm against them would be fully supported in doing so.

There was no way that I was not going to agree to what ASA required, which was basically to agree that homeopathy did not work. I likened the situation to a Ford dealer being told by ASA that they were unable to advertise their cars unless a Toyota dealer agreed with the advert! It was clearly nonsense - unacceptable nonsense.

So ASA made a formal adjudication again me, something that I proudly acknowledge. Even now, whenever I attend a homeopathic conference, homeopaths will congratulate me on my stance, so I still wear ASA's adjudication as a badge of pride!

What difference did the adjudication make? None whatsoever, as far as I could judge. Many of my patients knew about it, and they recognised the adjudication for what it was - the machinations of a pharmaceutical industry in which they had no trust or confidence it. So I know that the 'authority' of ASA has been damaged, far more than my reputation!

Moreover, I hold ASA in complete and utter contempt for allowing themselves to becomes the creature of the dishonest and corrupt pharmaceutical industry.

Wednesday, 28 August 2019

In July 2012 the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) published its first report on homeopathy. This report was withdrawn, and its existence and its contents were first denied, and never disclosed to the public.

In March 2015 the NHMRC published its second report on homeopathy, and this concluded that “…there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective”.

Homeopathy is used to being regularly attacked by the conventional medical establishment. We normally just get on with what we do best - making sick people fit and well! But this report seemed particularly dodgy, and I outlined the reasons for this in my second blog. In the main they were the same reasons as in any other report by medical science that states that homeopathy is ineffective.

But with the Australian report there was a further mystery. Why was the first report withdrawn? What were the findings of the first report? For several years a number of 'freedom of information' requests were made, but each time, they were turned down. No-one was allowed to see it.

Now, after considerable pressure from the homeopathic community, led by the Homeopathic Research Institute (HRI), the first NHMRC paper has been published. It can be read, in full here. It turns out that the author of this earlier report concluded that for at least five medical condition there was "encouraging evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy"
This is a different conclusion to the second report, which has been used homeopathy skeptics (supporters of conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry) to attack homeopathy ever since. This is the conclusion reached by Rachel Roberts, Chief Executive of HRI.

“For over three years NHMRC have refused to release their 2012 draft report on homeopathy, despite Freedom of Information requests and even requests by members of the Australian Senate. To see this document finally seeing the light of day is a major win for transparency and public accountability in research.”

The HRI will now carefully review the first (positive) report and compare it with the second (negative) report in terms of the science, or more accurately the misuse of science, that this whole episode has made clear. It is important that this is done.

This blog, however, raises important questions about the political power of the pharmaceutical industry, how influential the conventional medical establishment has become, how it now dominates public health services, and the health information and misinformation that patients are being subjected to by so-called medical 'science'.

In brief, the situation demonstrates that the conventional medical establishment....

... has the power to overturn a government sponsored report which found homeopathy to be an effective medical therapy, and insist on the writing of another report that would come to the opposite conclusion,

...has sufficient influence over medical science to insist that the new report deviates from what is generally considered to be 'good scientific practice' in order to come to the conclusion that the evidence for homeopathy does not warrant,

... has sufficient control over the mainstream media to ensure that it does not investigate what has happened, and censors any information that comes from homeopathy, and the natural health community generally,

... has sufficient influence and power over the Australian government to ensure that the findings of the 1st report remain unknown for several years, whilst the misinformation and lies contained in the 2nd report are taken up through its health policy, and acted upon.

Now that the first report has been published, belatedly, new questions come to mind. For instance, I am now wondering whether the conventional medical establishment has the power to ensure that the publication of the 1st report, favourable as it is to homeopathy, will still not mentioned, leave alone discussed, by the mainstream media?

And I wonder whether the Australian government's health policies will continue to exclude homeopathy, and other natural therapies, on the basis of the now discredited 2nd report?

Another, more general question, is this. Can the conventional medical establishment, that peddles such misinformation, ever be believed again, about anything? And can patients trust that conventional medicine is really interested in delivering good health?

I hope that you have been following my communication with the British Department of Health about mandatory vaccination, and the safety of vaccines as evidenced in each of the Patient Information Leaflets. If not, you can look at these two blogs.

Arising from this obfuscatory response, I have now written the Department of Health another letter, repeating more succinctly the main question I am asking - about what the British government thinks I should be allowed to tell you about the safety of the MMR, DPT and HPV vaccines. This is the letter.

Dear Secretary of StateFurther to my recent letter, and subsequent to your response, I can confirm that I am opposed to mandatory medicine because I do not believe that the MMR, DPT or HPV vaccines are safe.

I am aware that the Department of Health believes these vaccines are safe, and I understand, from your previous correspondence, that you consider anyone who says otherwise to be "deliberately spreading myths about vaccination for personal gain" and that the department "takes this very seriously".

This being so, and after reading the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that come with each of these vaccines, outlining their side effects, I need to ask these questions.

1. Which of the side effects, listed on each of the PIL documents, am I (or anyone else) allowed to mention without being accused by the Department as “deliberately spreading myths about vaccination”?2. Does the Department of Health consider that the listed side effects on each of these vaccines make the vaccine ‘safe’, and that when the public is told that the vaccines are ‘safe’, these reported side effects should not be mentioned?

These PILs are, after all, official documents produced by the conventional medical establishment for patient information; but I am aware that not many parents read these documents, and no mention of them is ever made about them by spokespersons of the Department of Health, or then NHS, when speaking to the mainstream media.

I look forward to your response to these questions.

I will, of course, let you know the response to these questions as soon as I have received it.